BOSTON -- When Senate President Stanley Rosenberg votes in next year's statewide election, he plans to fill in the bubble for the Democratic nominee for governor and see his own name on the ballot again.

There's one thing Rosenberg hopes he won't see on the 2018 ballot: a question that would lower the state's sales tax from 6.25 percent to 5 percent. And he might have a willing partner on a deal in the Retailers Association of Massachusetts.

"I've been around here long enough to know that a lot of things that are proposed for the ballot never make it to the ballot. I'd be happy to work with people to try to keep it off," Rosenberg said at a media availability in his office.

Rosenberg on Tuesday offered a look ahead at the election that's just under a year away, telling reporters he would seek a 15th term in the Senate and, if reelected, ask his colleagues to back him for a third term leading the chamber in 2019.

Gov. Charlie Baker on Tuesday discussed his own re-election bid from the Table Talk Pie plant in Worcester, and Rosenberg said that while he wishes the Swampscott Republican luck, he'll support the Democratic nominee.

Three men -- Jay Gonzalez of Needham, Setti Warren of Newton and Bob Massie of Somerville -- have launched campaigns for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Rosenberg said he's had "very engaging" phone conversations with each and does not have a favored candidate at this point.

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Rosenberg, an Amherst Democrat, declined to offer any specific critiques of Baker, but pointed to tax policy as an area where he and the governor disagree.

While Rosenberg and his Democratic colleagues in the House have not forced major tax choices upon Baker, he said he hoped a Democrat in the Corner Office could offer "a vision that would show us how we should change a tax system to get the resources we need for the public investments we need."

"We're not in the campaign right now," Rosenberg said. "My job is to govern with the governor, and we're doing a lot of good stuff and I want to make sure that we can continue to do a lot of good stuff."

Baker and leaders of the Democrat-controlled Legislature often tout their bipartisan working relationship. "It's too bad he's not a Democrat," Rosenberg quipped when asked about that dynamic.

The Senate has passed 13 major policy bills over the first 11 months of the two-year session -- including rewrites to the marijuana legalization ballot law, a campus sexual violence prevention bill, and criminal justice and health care legislation -- according to a report prepared by Rosenberg's office. The report does not mention a headline-grabbing law passed at the outset of 2017 that awarded big pay raises to legislators, judges and other public officials.

Among the accomplishments listed in the report is the Legislature's advancing of the so-called "Fair Share Amendment" -- a proposal to alter the state's constitution to impose a surtax on incomes over $1 million -- to the 2018 ballot. Opponents of the measure are working in court to get it disqualified from the ballot.

Rosenberg backs the surtax, which supporters say could generate roughly $2 billion to be used on transportation and education.

Frustrated with the migration of business to online sellers, retailers are seeking to place a separate question on the ballot that would cut the sales tax and require an annual sales tax-free weekend each summer. Passing that question as well would "defeat the purpose" of the surtax, Rosenberg said, "because you'd lose almost the same amount of money."

"I'm hoping that circumstances are such that they won't both be on the ballot, so that's the first thing, and we should work to try to make that possible," he said. "The second is, if it appears on the ballot, the voters have in the past rejected sales tax reductions by initiative and I would hope that people who show up and vote for Fair Share would recognize that all we'd be doing is shifting the tax burden over onto the income tax as opposed to having a broader tax system, and so I would hope the people who show up to vote for one would not vote for the other."

The Legislature in 2009 raised the sales tax from 5 percent to 6.25 percent to plug state budget gaps that developed during and after the Great Recession. The following year, voters shot down a ballot question to lower the sales tax to 3 percent, rejecting the proposal 57 percent to 43 percent.

While supporters of the 2010 ballot question said its passage would have put $688 into taxpayers' pockets each year and compelled state government to cut spending, public employee unions and major business groups led a push to defeat it, arguing it would have forced $2.5 billion in cuts to education, local aid and health care programs and undercut investments in infrastructure needed to support business.

The Retailers Association of Massachusetts has said its proposal to drop the sales tax from 6.25 percent to 5 percent would "provide meaningful relief to small businesses while significantly benefiting seniors and low-income families who pay a disproportionate amount of their income in sales tax."

"We look forward to continuing to work with the Senate President on issues of importance to our thousands of 'Main Street' businesses and their employees," association President Jon Hurst said in an email to the News Service on Tuesday. "At the same time, we are encouraged by the recent public polling data that shows overwhelming support among voters for the creation of a permanent sales tax holiday and a reduction in the sales tax to 5%. It is important to note we project revenue estimates for cutting the regressive and avoidable sales tax under our proposed ballot measure to be less than half of the $2 billion tax increase level of the proposed income tax surcharge."

Pressed about a possible deal to avert a ballot fight, Hurst said he would "absolutely" be willing to work with Rosenberg to reach a compromise and that the association believes the ballot "should be the last option to seek good public policy and fairness in the marketplace."

Ballot campaigns last week had to turn in at least 64,750 certified signatures to local election officials for their efforts to stay alive. The next hurdle to clear is the filing of an additional 10,792 signatures with Secretary of State William Galvin's office in June 2018.

Gathering the required signatures doesn't guarantee a question will end up before voters next November. Initiatives can face legal challenges that knock them off the ballot, or lawmakers can develop legislation that the proponents find to be an acceptable substitute.

Senate Democrats this year set up a task force to examine public policy issues of interest to retailers, including ways to strengthen that sector. The group's recommendations are due June 1, shortly before ballot activists would need to decide whether to forge ahead to the November ballot.

Rosenberg said he has no specific plans in mind for what could keep the sales tax cut off the ballot. "Many things could happen between now and then," he said.

He pointed to two other potential ballot questions -- one that would raise the minimum hourly wage from $11 to $15 and one that would implement a paid family and medical leave program -- as areas where he'd like to see lawmakers come up with a deal.

"That would be two examples that I hope we'll find the bandwidth and the capacity to do in the Legislature, because there's nuance, and you don't get the nuance on the ballot," Rosenberg said.

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